For more than a decade, Discord was viewed as a cosy online space for gamers to connect and chat while playing video games together.
It was a relatively anonymous digital hangout where you could jump in with just a username and password. There was no fuss, no phone numbers, and no mandatory verification. In fact, you could maintain a throwaway account simply to connect without ever surrendering personally identifiable information.
Another threat to digital privacy and anonymity
Recently, Discord unveiled what appears to be its long-term ambition: mass global surveillance. The company announced that starting in March, users will be forced to submit photos of their real government ID and allow Discord to perform biometric face scans. Failure to comply will result in severe communication restrictions, which is precisely the point of the programme.
This isn’t the first time public-private overreach has been foisted onto society. It is part of a long string of terrible laws, such as the UK’s so-called Online Safety Act, and other legislation requiring all digital activity to be tracked and traced back to a real identity.
Naturally, these laws attempt to outlaw technologies like VPNs, Tor, and I2P, all of which circumvent these cretinous restrictions by allowing users to maintain anonymity online.
“Think of the children”
Governments repeatedly claim these kind of laws exist to protect children, but in reality, this is merely the latest wrapping paper for mass surveillance. It used to be the threat of terrorism; since that has fallen out of vogue, the focus has shifted entirely to children.
In places like the UK and Australia, which are pushing such laws the hardest, users will be classified as minors until they prove otherwise.
Now Discord was founded in 2015. If these regulations made any sense at all, one would assume that accounts created a decade ago would automatically be recognised as belonging to adults. Instead, those legacy accounts are subject to the same treatment. That tells you everything you need to know.
The Palantir connection
Adding to these worries is Persona, the vendor handling the verification. Persona is funded by Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir, which is the world’s largest surveillance company. Palantir holds major contracts with the US Department of Defence, the CIA, ICE, and every other three-letter agency imaginable.
Whoops! Discord lied, sends your face and info to others for “experiments.”
Discord is now running “an experiment” in censor happy UK, where they will send your personal data from age verification to Persona.
Persona is backed by Palantir. pic.twitter.com/xjlQ5S8Cea
— Grummz (@Grummz) February 14, 2026
You may genuinely, and perhaps lazily, believe that you have nothing to hide. You might not care that Discord has your ID, but you must consider the people you connect with globally. These people are not necessarily your close friends.
On a platform like Discord, you could easily associate with someone targeted by these agencies. That association alone could lead to home visits, device seizures, blacklisting, detention, and interrogation, simply for having unknowingly been in contact with a suspect.
Data insecurity as a service
Even if you trust that the government won’t violate your rights during an investigation, your government ID and biometrics will not be stored securely. One need look no further than Discord itself, which recently experienced a data leak exposing 70,000 user IDs, partial credit card details, and chat logs.
Discord is not alone in this trend. A worrying number of apps now request government IDs for verification, only for that data to frequently surface in breaches. Much like with Chat Control, the stated goal of protecting children falls apart under minimal scrutiny.
Safeguarding the young is the new pretext for corporate-government overreach. It is a slap in the face for anyone not living under a rock who can see two-tier justice operating on a global scale.
The expansion of the surveillance state
The push for widespread identity verification just to share memes is purely about broadening the surveillance state. It is frankly baffling that people still trust a government that cannot even deliver justice against the global paedophile cabals in our very midst.
The idea that these apparatchiks and unscrupulous businessmen are going to clean up the “streets” of Discord is so ridiculous it belongs in The Onion. I can see the headline now: “Politicians and Big Tech meet on Epstein Island to protect children online.”
In closing, if you want your children to be safer online, do not just hand them an iPad. Be involved in their lives and implement decent parental controls yourself, rather than voting for someone else to do it for you (badly).
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